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On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Joseph P. McDonald manned the switchboard at Fort Shafter in Hawaii when he received the alarming message that radar had detected a large number of planes approaching from the north, heading fast for Oahu.
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Motorists who use the Pango mobile app to pay at parking meters in Scranton will get reimbursed for any inadvertent overcharges since Sept. 1, the new operator of the city’s parking system said.
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Frank L. Pavlico III, the Waverly Twp. informant who helped topple mob boss William "Big Billy" D'Elia, committed suicide Wednesday, a day after appearing in court in Wilkes-Barre for violating his bond in a pending South Carolina fraud case.

Federal authorities disclosed Mr. Pavlico's death in a handwritten notation Wednesday on the bottom of his arrest warrant and in a subsequent court filing asking that the fraud charges be dismissed because the "defendant is deceased."

Lackawanna County Coroner Tim Rowland said Thursday his office had ruled Mr. Pavlico's death a suicide by asphyxia. Mr. Pavlico's death occurred inside his home, Mr. Rowland said. According to the warrant notation, federal probation officers in Pennsylvania indicated Mr. Pavlico, 43, had hanged himself.

David C. Stephens, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the South Carolina case, said Mr. Pavlico's attorney informed him of the death at 7 a.m., Wednesday - 90 minutes after Mr. Rowland's office was summoned to Mr. Pavlico's home. An FBI agent in Pennsylvania confirmed the attorney's report with the coroner's office, Mr. Stephens said.

"Personally and on behalf of the United States attorney's office, I would express our deepest sympathies to Mr. Pavlico's family," Mr. Stephens said. "Mr. Pavlico was always polite, well-mannered and well-spoken when dealing with me and the court."

A federal magistrate had permitted Mr. Pavlico to remain in Pennsylvania while awaiting trial after a Greenville, S.C., bonding company posted $75,000 secured bond on his behalf last December.

Mr. Pavlico violated that bond in August by failing to advise an investment client of his pending criminal charges, prosecutors said.

Mr. Pavlico failed to appear at a violation hearing Tuesday in Greenville, triggering his arrest 680 miles north in Pennsylvania and a detention hearing before Magistrate Judge Malachy E. Mannion at the Max Rosenn U.S. Courthouse in Wilkes-Barre.

Judge Mannion, according to court documents, released Mr. Pavlico with the understanding he would appear at a rescheduled violation hearing in Greenville on Wednesday.

Instead, according to Mr. Rowland, Mr. Pavlico ended his life.

Mr. Pavlico hatched the scheme at the heart of the South Carolina case while on probation after serving 10 months in prison for his role in the marijuana money-laundering case that led to Mr. D'Elia's arrest, prosecutors said.

Mr. Pavlico helped set up Mr. D'Elia in a fake money-laundering operation and secretly recorded their conversations, prosecutors said. Mr. D'Elia plotted to have Mr. Pavlico killed after learning of his cooperation, prosecutors said.

Mr. D'Elia, of Hughestown, could be released from a seven-year, three-month sentence as early as Feb. 2. He has been living in a halfway house and working at an Exeter ice cream shop since his September transfer from a federal prison in Arizona.

A federal grand jury in South Carolina indicted Mr. Pavlico in the fraud scheme in November 2011 and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal investment regulator, filed a nearly simultaneous civil action.

The investments, the federal authorities said, were a fictitious front for Mr. Pavlico, who used the alias Frank Lorenzo, and Ms. Baylor to keep the money.

Mr. Pavlico and Ms. Baylor used some of the proceeds to purchase a Jaguar and a Range Rover, meals at expensive restaurants, items from Jimmy Choo and other upscale retailers and a trip to the Bahamas, the authorities said.

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